The old man stripped off his bush jacket and pillowed his back against one of the boat seats. “I don’t doubt that our anthropologist friend Bryan could tell us all about the legendary faerie antipathy toward iron. He’d probably explain it in terms of the ancient tensions between Bronze Age and Iron Age cultures… Be that as it may, European folklore is almost universal in believing that iron is repugnant or even deadly to the Old People.”
The nun burst out, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Claude! Epone was an exotic, not some bloody elf!”
“Then you tell me why bear-dog bites and dismemberment and stab wounds from a bronze sword didn’t finish her off, while a single thrust from a steel knife blade did.”
Amerie considered. “It may be that the iron interferes in some way with the function of the torc. The blood of the Tanu is red, just like ours, and probably just as iron-rich. Their bodies and minds and the torc might operate in a delicate harmony that could be upset by the introduction of a gross mass of iron. Iron might even wonk them up if it just came near the body’s intimate aura. Remember Stein and his battle-axe? None of the castle people was able to prevent him from doing terrible damage, which didn’t strike me as strange at the time. But with what we know now, it seems significant.
“They frisked us thoroughly enough,” Claude said. “I can understand why the guardians weren’t able to pry Stein loose from his axe. But how did Felice’s knife slip through?”
“I can’t imagine, unless they were careless and didn’t sweep her leg. Or perhaps the gold of the scabbard confused the detector. It suggests possibilities for counter-tactics.”
Claude studied her through half-closed lids. There was an intensity about her that was new and startling. “Now you’re beginning to sound like Felice! That child has no qualms about taking on the whole Tanu race. Never mind that they control the friggerty planet!”
Amerie flashed him an odd smile. “But it’s our planet. And six million years from now, we’ll be here. And they won’t.”
She snugged the tiller under her arm and kept the boat racing eastward, its sail taut before the freshening breeze.
They came up behind a marshy island, hauled down sails and unstepped and deflated masts and centreboards. Armloads of reeds and young willows were cut to disguise the boats. They substituted rear mounted decamole sculling oars for the sailing rudders. A person crouched low in the stern could impart a barely perceptible forward motion by wagging the oar back and forth.
Richard protested, “It’ll take us two hours to travel the half klom to the shore at this rate.”
“Keep your voice down,” Claude warned him. “Sound travels over water.” He brought his boat close to Richard’s. “Somewhere on that shore is the trail, maybe even the fort where we were scheduled to stop for sleep this morning. We’ve got to be careful about showing ourselves until we’re sure the coast is clear. “Richard laughed nervously. “The coast is clear! So that’s where the cliche came from! Probably pirates…”
“Shut up, son,” said the old man, weariness making his low voice harsh. “Just follow me from here on in and pretend you’re a collection of flotsam.”
Claude sculled so slowly that there was no wake; they seemed to drift from islet to islet, gradually approaching a low-lying shore where reeds and sedges grew more than five meters tall and long-shanked water birds with plumage of pink and blue and dazzling white stalked the shallows, jabbing at frogs and fish with their beaks.
The sun rose higher. It became excruciatingly hot and humid. Some kind of biting midge zeroed in on them, trapped as they were beneath the concealing greenery, and raised itching welts before they could find repellant in their awkwardly stowed packs. After a tedious interval of paddling, they scraped bottom on a jungle mudflat where many of the bamboos had trunks as thick as a man’s thigh. Broadleaf evergreen trees perfumed the air with sickly sweet flowers. There was a game trail in the mud, heavily trampled by large flat feet. It looked as though it would lead them to higher ground.
“This is it,” Claude said. “We deflate the dinghies and hike from here.”
Richard extracted himself from the mass of stalks and branches in his boat and surveyed the site with disgust. “Jesus, Claude. Did you have to land us in a fuckin’ swamp? Talk about the green hells! This place is probably crawling with snakes. And will you look at those footprints? Some mighty ugly mothers been cruising through here!”
“Oh, stuff it, Richard,” Amerie said. “Help me get Felice ashore and I’ll try to revive her while you guys…”
“Get down, everybody!” the old man whispered urgently.
They crouched low in the boats and stared in the direction from which they had come. Out beyond the marshy little islands, where the lake was deep and the breeze blew unimpeded, were a pair of seven-meter catboats that bore no resemblance to any of the craft launched by the escapees. They were slowly tacking northward.
“Well, now we know where the fort must be,” Claude remarked. “South of here and most likely not very far away. They’ve probably got oculars on board so well have to stay down until they get around that point.”
They waited. Sweat trickled down various body surfaces and made them itch. The frustrated midges whined and went on sorties against their unprotected eyeballs and nostrils. Claude’s belly rumbled, reminding him that he had not eaten in nearly twelve hours. Richard discovered a sticky gash hidden in the hair above his left ear, and so did the local variety of blow-fly. Amerie made a desultory attempt to pray; but her memory bank refused to pay out any withdrawals except the grace before meals and “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.”
Felice moaned.
“Cover her mouth, Richard,” Claude said. “Keep her quiet for just a few minutes longer.”
Somewhere, ducks were quacking. Somewhere else, an animal was snuffling and slurping and breaking the giant bamboos like twigs as it sought its lunch. And elsewhere still, the silver sound of a horn sang on the limit of audibility, to be followed seconds later by a louder response farther north.
The old paleontologist sighed. “They’re out of sight. Let’s deflate these boats and move on.”
The power-inflators, used in reverse, swiftly sucked both air and water out of the decamole membranes, reducing the boats to spheres the size of Ping-Pong balls. While Amerie revived Felice with a dose of stimulant, Claude rummaged in his pack for survival-ration biscuits and fortified candy, which he shared with the others.
Felice was listless and disoriented but seemed well enough to walk. Claude tried to get her to remove her leather cuirass, greaves, and gauntlets, which had to be acutely uncomfortable in the muggy atmosphere of the marsh; but she refused, only agreeing to keep her helmet stowed in the pack when Claude pointed out that its plumage might betray them to searchers. As a final ritual they daubed each other with camouflaging mud, then set off with Claude in the lead, Richard following, and Amerie and Felice bringing up the rear. The ring-hockey player had appropriated the bow and arrows.
They went quietly along the trail, which was wide enough for them to travel in comfort, a circumstance that pleased Richard and the women but rather alarmed the more wilderness-wise Claude. For nearly two kilometers they slogged through stands of bamboo, alder, willow, and semitropical evergreens, some trees laden with fruits of russet and purple, which Claude warned them against sampling. To their surprise, the only wildlife encountered was birds and giant leeches. The ground became higher and drier and they passed into dense forest, loud with bird and animal voices. The trees were draped in vines and the undergrowth formed a mass of impenetrable thorn bushes on both side of the trail.